Yasutomi Nishizuka is a celebrated biochemist who discovered protein kinase C, an enzyme which controls the biology of cells. In further studies, he and his group found that tumor-promoting agents could trigger unregulated cell growth by activating protein kinase C. In 1989, Nishizuka won the Lasker Basic Medical Research Award "for his profound contributions to the understanding of signal transduction in cells and for his discovery that carcinogens trigger cell growth by activating protein kinase C." In 1988, he received The Order of Culture from the Emperor of Japan. Nishizuka is professor and chairman of the department of biochemistry at Kobe University School of Medicine and director of the Biosignal Research Center in Kobe.

Nishizuka was born on July 12, 1932. He received his medical degree in 1957 and his Ph.D. in 1962, both from Kyoto University. For the next two years, Nishizuka was a research associate in the laboratory of Osamu Hayaishi...